


Person to Person

by Tarlan



Category: Cypher (2002)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Missing Scene, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-01-01
Updated: 2006-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-20 18:03:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/215615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tarlan/pseuds/Tarlan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dunn regains consciousness in his office after the attack by Sullivan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Person to Person

Virgil suppressed a moan as he rolled over onto his back amid the shattered glass. He took two deep ragged breaths before levering himself upwards, gasping at the pain that exploded in his head. Tentatively, he reached out and winced as his fingers found wetness around torn flesh. Bringing his hand back, he looked at the fingers, confused by the red liquid until he realized it was blood. His blood.

Memories rushed back at him. Memories of Morgan Sullivan and the way his eyes had hardened when Virgil asked him that final question.

Are you a double agent?

Pushing to his knees, he crawled towards the desk, reaching for the alarm and sighing as the klaxon began to blare through the complex. Silently, he hoped he was in time to stop Sullivan escaping the Vault, knowing the alarm would automatically seal the doors and halt the elevator. Virgil collapsed back onto the floor, wincing as shards of glass embedded into the palms of his hands and tore through the rubberized suit he was forced to wear while on duty to reduce the build-up of static electricity. He felt hot and could feel the sweat trickling down his face and neck, the salty perspiration stinging against his head wound. Blood mingled with the sweat, flowing more freely but then, he recalled mention that head wounds always bled a lot.

The sound of running feet brought his head up sharply and he regretted the motion instantly, groaning in pain.

"Dunn?"

Virgil waved a hand towards one of the guards. "Sullivan... stop Sullivan."

The man was on his communicator immediately, explaining the situation to his superiors, while the other guard crouched down beside Virgil.

"So much for the 100 percent accuracy of neurographs," Virgil mumbled with disdain, knowing he had proved to himself, at least, that the right person could be better at spotting a double agent than a machine. Just a few questions were all it took, and Virgil cursed his stupidity in pandering to his innate sixth sense concerning Sullivan before calling for back up. At the very least, he could have positioned himself closer to the gun he had laid on the desk only a few minutes earlier.

"Get me up," he ordered, holding out an arm that was gripped tightly. Using the guard for support, Virgil staggered around the desk and slumped into his seat, eyes screwed shut from the tremendous pain that lanced through his head.

Fracture... concussion, maybe, he thought almost in abstract as he opened his eyes to view the disk player. It was empty. Sullivan had taken the Sunways disk loaded with whatever data he had downloaded to the system. Pulling the keyboard towards him, his fingers played automatically over the keys from long familiarity, obeying the signals from his brain as he tapped into the system and tried to locate the path which the downloaded file had taken.

All sorts of concerns went through his head, though having the disk would make it far easier to confirm the nature of the intrusion. Virus, trojan, worm? He had not been paying close enough attention to see if it had uploaded anything even as it downloaded the data contained on the disk. He went to the system log files, accessing them in reverse chronological order in the hope of finding a trace of an executing program.

A file access?

Virgil frowned and instantly regretted the furrowing of his forehead as the skin pulled tight across the ragged gash at his temple.

"Dunn? What happened?"

Virgil glanced towards the door as his supervisor rushed in. "Did you get the disk back from Sullivan?"

"Sullivan escaped." Virgil screwed his face up in confusion. He had been out for no more than a minute. Even an Olympic sprinter could not have made it back to the surface in that time. "He had help." Jenkins hovered behind Virgil's shoulder. "Any idea what he did?"

Virgil shook his head slowly and carefully, not wanting to feel the pain lance through him again. "No trace of any attack on the system.... just a single file access."

"What file?"

"I don't know... it's been erased from all back-ups."

"What about the remote back-ups?"

"Without knowing what he took, it could take weeks to go through every file on the system... even with the processor dedicated to the task." Virgil looked up. "Whatever the file was, he didn't erase it... he overwrote it and reset the system date. Same date, same byte count. We'd have to go through trillions of files, byte by byte, to find out what's changed."

"But we could do it?"

"Yes... yes." Virgil lowered his head onto his arms. "We could do it."

"Then get started."

Virgil raised his head, his focus swimming alarmingly and he swallowed back an impulse to throw up, feeling more nauseous by the second. "I don't think I..." His vision darkened from the edges and, from a great distance, he heard Jenkins call his name over and over but warm darkness beckoned to him and he embraced it wholeheartedly.

* * *

Virgil opened his eyes, wincing against the glare of the even the dimmed artificial lights of this room. He was lying down on a firm bed with crisp white sheets covering him. Tentatively, he reached up and felt the roughness of a bandage around his head. The door opened and an unfamiliar woman walked in, dressed in the uniform of the Sunways medical personnel.

"How are you feeling?"

"I honestly don't know," he replied, having made no attempt to do more than gingerly touch the bandage. He frowned, suddenly recalling the events leading to his injuries and gasped as an attempt to sit up sent his senses spinning.

"The file," he gasped as he fell back against the pillows.

"Is gone," came a familiar voice from the threshold of the room. "Along with the heads of Sunways and Digicorp. Both dead." Virgil opened his eyes and stared at Jenkins as the man settled into a seat beside him. "Morgan Sullivan was a mole."

"I figured that out within minutes," Virgil responded dryly. "A Digicorp mole?"

"Yes... and no. A triple agent. He wasn't exactly from Digicorp though they thought he was their mole. He betrayed them too."

"Then who ran the show?"

"We don't know.... and truthfully, it no longer matters. Both companies are still in turmoil, trying to sort out the politics." Jenkins reached out and patted Virgil's leg. "Between you and me, Dunn. Person to person. You did good. You did real good, just like you always bragged. Shame no one listened before... but maybe they'll listen now."

"Small consolation," Virgil remarked as his hand drifted to his sore head but Jenkins merely smiled and got up to leave.

He paused on the threshold, his smile widening. "Is an escape from the Vault consolation enough?"

Virgil's eyes widened. Three years ago, he had been a Sunways agent, monitoring for moles trying to infiltrate the organization but the neurographs had replaced him. They sent him to work in the Vault. For three years he had seen sunlight only on the screens of the two large monitors in his office, living and sleeping in the artificial world far beneath the surface. Once a month, he escaped the recycled air when he went topside to greet the latest courier from Sunways but it was always at night and he was always on a strict time limit.

For three years, he had vanquished his dreams of feeling sunlight on his face by drinking too heavily, on the pretense of trying to perfect the moonshine distilled in his office. Now, for the first time in three years, Virgil smiled in true pleasure.

"So... when do I get out of here."

THE END


End file.
